In the early 1940s the Beloit Historical Society’s Memoirs Committee, headed by Minnie McIntyre Wallace, asked octogenarian Oscar Thompson (1860-1958) to write his recollections of Beloit. Following are some excerpts from that booklet, Home Town.
About the first of my definite childhood recollections was when President Lincoln was shot. I was five years old and remember how my mother fastened two small flags to the gate posts in front of the house, the flags draped in black…
In those early days [1860s] the upper end of Third Street was peopled mostly by Irish and Norwegian families...We had a Third Street gang consisting of Irish and Norwegian boys...Once in a while there might be fight, but it was of small consequence and soon forgotten...There was also another gang of wild Irish boys living in what was known as “the patch” down by the North Western tracks across the river. These two gangs were always at war. A Third Street boy would not dare to venture across the railroad bridge into the patch district alone. He would be sure to be set upon and chased out by the patch gang, and the same rule applied if any of them dared intrude on the Third Street area. This all made for excitement and team work...
… In those days there was a big ice-house located on the river bank just north of what is now the Portland Ave. bridge. It was known as Dole’s icehouse. Every winter, as soon as the ice got to be 10 inches or more thick, the ice harvest began. The snow would be scraped off the ice, and the men with horses and a special sharp pointed ice plow, would cut creases in the ice, to form the size of the ice blocks wanted. After the plows the men used big saws to finish cutting the creases clear through. They would then be broken into cakes and the cakes pushed along through an open channel to the ice house where they were caught by a hoist device and pulled up an incline into the ice house…
… In the spring of 1875…[t]he Burr Robins circus was showing in Beloit. Their tents were pitched on the lot on Shirland Ave., where the gas works are now located. In those days we had a lot of toughs around town who were always looking for trouble, and circus people were a tough lot too. In some way, I don’t know how, a squabble arose which soon led into a general all-around fight. The police were called and City Marshal Janvrin appeared on the scene to restore order. But he could not singlehanded handle the mob. Reports were that he was hit on the head by a club in the hands of Pat Ford, a circus man, and so badly injured he died in two or three weeks. Pat Ford was chased all over town, but finally managed to get across the line into Illinois. He was later arrested…
… In 1883 we had the big cyclone. The storm came on in the late afternoon. We could see the black clouds coming over from the west, and all of a sudden about 5 p.m. the blast came. It seemed to be all over in a minute or two, but the damage done was great...The storm came up from the southwest and followed the path of the river and swept through the main business district. The old covered Northwestern R. R. bridge was torn from its piers and thrown into the river. Many store fronts on the south side of West Grand Avenue were blown out and demolished… The roof of Bort Bailey Dry Goods store was ripped off and the streets were littered with glass and roof materials...The steeple of the Presbyterian church in Broad St. was blown down, also the 200 foot steeple of the First Congregational Church…[t]he clock in the...steeple was not injured and continued to run…
…The street department now and then “improved” the streets by a coating of gravel which did but little good. It was not till 1896 that we began our paving program in a very small way. The first streets paved were Grand Avenue from the C. & N. W. station to State Street, and State from Bort’s corner to Broad. The so-called paving consisted of a strip of brick paving 10 feet or so wide on each side to form the gutters at the sidewalk and the center of the street for traffic was paved with crushed limestone…After that the paving program continued to expand year by year, until all city streets were fully paved. At first various types of paving were tried – brick, asphalt, wooden blocks and cement. Now nothing but cement is used…
… In those early days every residence lot had to have a fence around it to keep out the cows, dogs and children who were roaming the streets. A real swell place had a white picket fence and they really looked very nice… When C. C. Keeler built his fine new house, corner of Broad and Prospect, he removed his fences and set a new style. At first everybody thought it was terrible, but gradually… others adopted the new style when their old fences became rotten and rickety…
… In the early days of the sixties and seventies Broad Street was generally conceded to be the best residence street in the city. And it was a fine street. It was extra wide and had fine big elm trees on each side. Many of the older and better known families lived in this street… They used to claim that if you did not live in Broad street you were not of the elite of the city… But how have the mighty fallen! Today it is known as automobile row, and all the old time residents are either dead or have abandoned the street…
In 1878 President Rutherford B. Hayes was on a tour of the west… They sent him an invitation to come and visit Beloit, and… [h]e was driven to the fairgrounds and served a dinner… Then he addressed the crowd… When he returned to the North Western depot to take the train back to Chicago, there was a great crowd there… My father was carrying my little one year old baby sister, and when he passed him the President spoke and smiled at the baby and kissed her. Immediately everybody began to exclaim, “The President kissed your baby.” All thought it was quite an event. Probably no other baby in Beloit has ever been kissed by a President either before or since.